Captain’s Log 9.7.2015 : Women in Games

Now that the Internet hate hoohah about how “There’s a woman in my game!” has cooled off, I think we can begin to take a far more realistic approach to the continual increase in women in game development careers and playing games. How awesome is it that the female portion of the population is playing games, spending money in the industry, populating gaming sites, and going into game development careers!?!

I’ll answer that: It’s fooking hugely awesome!

As someone who’s been working in the games industry for *cough* many years, I can tell you——and you can believe me when I do——that this is kickass. If for no other reason than the fact that we can finally develop games geared toward an audience that isn’t an adolescent male of the “Raging Hormones” variety. What a breath of fresh air (literally).

So, we at Games Omniverse wanted to make it abundantly clear how we feel about women gamers. We…well, lots of us are them. But we also love them. We would like nothing more than to hire talented and skilled women, especially programmers, a marketing expert, and an ad artist. No hyperbole. If you’re one of these, and would like to join the team at Games Omniverse, please contact me at angel@gamesomniverse. We don’t pay much money, but we have lots of laughs and satisfaction.

More women! More women! Hehe.

This icon was created to show that we welcome, appreciate, and encourage/hire women at Games Omniverse. It’s yours too, if you would like to post it on your site, Twitter, Facebook, or tattoo.

Just kidding about the tattoo. Kinda.

What most people don’t realize is that there have been women in the games industry for a long time. Carol Shaw designed games for the Atari 2600, which some of you probably aren’t even old enough to remember!

I’ll also point to one of my long-time dev heroes: Roberta Williams. She was one of the most influential game designers of the 1980s and ’90s. She created the first ever graphical adventure game. She created the first graphical video game I ever played.

And let’s talk about my other dev crush: Robin Hunicke. While playing “Journey” a game she executive-produced, I had one of those rare AHAH moments about game design and what we’re trying to accomplish. That game stole my heart within minutes of beginning and I’ll never forget the feels, as they say.

Remember those portals you loved so much in the Valve game Portal? Guess what? A woman came up with those! Her name is Kim Swift and she developed the idea as a student. Valve later hired her and adopted the idea.

So, this is just a small sampling too! Women have been making innovative games for a long time. We’ve been around.

And we’re not going anywhere.

If you wanna talk about women gamers, women developers, or just women in general… or anything at all, head on over to our forums!